Killing Me Softly
by Yan Niao
Summary: Takiko and her father come to a decision. Introspection on the anticipated ending of Genbu Kaiden.


This was actually written for English class last year, so you might be able to detect some tiny changes to the story, but anyone familiar with GK will know what's going on here.

Yes, more angst for this story. Apparently I'm incapable of writing anything happy, but... I really do love this series, and if it does not get a happy ending I will be very, very angry. :| (And I will write a happy version. Yes, you read that. I, the writer of Genbu Kaiden angst, will write a happy, non-bittersweet ending if Watase does not give it the ending these characters deserve.)

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**Killing Me Softly**

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It was really no surprise when she found herself sprawled across her front lawn. She'd seen this coming, seen it from the moment she first pulled the blanket up to her mother's chin and run her hands through her hair. The water that trickled from her hands as she'd dipped, wrung, and folded the cloth that would keep her mother clean, over and over, every day, had slid and tickled slowly down her wrists. She could feel something else now, too, slipping and tickling not just over her skin but through her veins. It had been inevitable. This was no surprise.

Footsteps. Footsteps cut through the blissful silence as someone's feet slapped against the wooden floor. The door slid open, and she heard someone take a sharp breath of air and let out a mournful cry. Warm hands were fluttering over her, and she heard a man's voice speaking, though she could not make out what it was he said, and spasms wracked her body and she sat up in shock as pain wrenched and tore through her throat, and then

At first she didn't know where she was. She saw no open sky, but there was something familiar about the wooden room and the screens that surrounded her, and slowly her bleary eyes focused as she turned her head, just able to make out his fuzzy shape sitting beside the bed on which she lay. Her eyes landed on the book that was clenched in his white-knuckled hands; she suddenly felt winded, as though she'd been punched, for she knew the rough edges of that book, could see the dark hair falling over its pages as a trembling hand struggled to push the pen across the page every morning, refusing to break a lifelong habit.

At the sound of her movement, he looked up and grabbed hold of her right forearm as though he was afraid she would vanish if he let go. The pause that followed hung in the air, pregnant and palpable, until he turned her hand palm-up and she remembered just what she had been doing in the first place before she had been so rudely interrupted. Her eyes met his, a moment of brown meeting identical brown, and she nodded once.

He helped her to stand, arm around her shoulders, and her hand curled more tightly around the object in her palm as though it was her lifeline; she took comfort in the cool metal that pressed deeply into her palm, leaving two lines of red dark enough that she knew it would be a while before they faded. Her bare feet shuffled against the wooden floors—_splinters._ She took no notice, though she noticed everything; she was tunnel-visioned in this room, and yet everything was so clear.

She turned to him again, the rushing of her blood now thrumming steadily in her ears, and reached for his hands to press the cool-metal lifeline into them. He turned pale for a moment, and the world froze around them as he understood what she was asking of him. She tilted her head. He hadn't seen her, hadn't watched the once-ruddy skin turn to paper, flesh hanging from bones, broken only by splotches of hourly crimson. Perhaps she was selfish, but he'd agreed to be selfish with her. That wasn't to be her fate; they would fight it together. The breath hissed between his teeth, and he did not lose sight of her face or let her right hand slip from his grasp as with his own right hand he took that object from her.

Memories were irrelevant now. They had each other. She banished them from her memory, _We'll start anew, _it wasn't too late to fix things. The line held them now, though without letting go of her he took one step back, and together they drew shaky breaths in a last goodbye to despair.

The next morning, the town newspaper carried the headline: FATHER SHOOTS DAUGHTER, SELF.


End file.
